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Thursday, May 28, 2015

Make Your Own Miniature Chairs

Camille Minichino (AKA Margaret Grace) joins us today for Crafty Thursdays to tell us how to make these wonderful miniatures and to tell us about her latest book, Manhattan in Miniature. AND Camille is giving away a handy craft tool, so don't forget to comment below to enter.Geraldine Porter and her 11-year-old granddaughter are not just co-sleuths; they're partners in all things miniature. They work together building dollhouses, making room boxes, and creating small pieces like these café chairs. In their newest adventure, Manhattan in Miniature, released in April by Margaret Grace, the two travel to New York City to help with a miniatures fair at a hotel near Grand Central Station. One of Maddie's favorite demonstrations is this DIY miniature chair made from the cages of champagne bottles, perfect for a patio or an ice cream shop. Here's her instruction sheet.

Remove the bottom wire from each cage: Either use pliers to untwist the ends (usually very difficult) or use wire cutters to snip out the twisted sections. Slide the wires through the loops at the ends of the "legs." Put the loose wires aside.

* You now already have two stools! But let's get a little fancier. We'll call this the seat and legs of the chair and move on to construct the back.Step 2. The chair back.

Take the second cage, also minus its bottom wire, and bend two of the legs straight down, the other two across each other. (If you dislodge the cap from the legs, don't worry, it can be snapped back later, or glued in place.)Step 3. Attaching chair back to seat.

Twist legs of the second cage around bottom legs of the first cage.

Here's your chair! (Note, I didn't have enough supplies from the same winery, so the finished chair shown has a different logo!)

Step 4. Finishing touches.

Straighten any crooked sections. Turn bottom loops out to form "feet" and adjust legs so that all feet touch the floor.

You're done. Have a seat!

VARIATIONS(1) Take the bottom wire extracted from Step 1. Twist the wire into any shape you like (Make it smoother than I've done here!).

(2) Attach the ends of the wire to the legs of the stool in the same way as Step 3 above. Shown here: sample soda fountain chairs with fancy backs. Some of the wires have been painted black.

(3) Make a cushion from scrap fabric and add to the seat of the chair, or (as shown) simply cut a circle of any design to size and glue to cap.(4) Make a table using a cork as a base. The top can be a piece of glass or any other rigid material that can be supported by the cork. Or simply use the cork as is. Most corks are too tall for the scale of their cages, and will probably need to be trimmed down.I hope you have a good time furnishing a soda fountain or café.Each of the eight miniature mysteries by Margaret Grace has tips at the end for other fun projects.Camille Minichino (aka Margaret Grace) is the author of more than 20 mysteries, as well as short stories and nonfiction. She's at www.minichino.com and blogs at minichino.com/wordpress.